×
Bill Kristol likes the Surge. That's the sort of forward-looking, fresh commentary you can only find on the New York Times op-ed page! Meanwhile, from the William Kristol reading list files comes the correction at the bottom of today's column:
In last week’s column, I mistakenly attributed a quotation from Michael Medved to Michelle Malkin. I regret the error.I empathize with Kristol. It's hard to tell such great thinkers apart.Update: It's worth zeroing in for a moment on the sort of wisdom we're getting from the Times op-ed page:
The Democrats were wrong in their assessments of the surge. Attacks per week on American troops are now down about 60 percent from June. Civilian deaths are down approximately 75 percent from a year ago. December 2007 saw the second-lowest number of U.S. troops killed in action since March 2003. And according to Lt. Gen. Ray Odierno, commander of day-to-day military operations in Iraq, last month’s overall number of deaths, which includes Iraqi security forces and civilian casualties as well as U.S. and coalition losses, may well have been the lowest since the war began.Imagine you have a failing business. And I promise to turn it around and make you a profit. And the way I do that is begin selling all your products for less money. And so people begin buying more. A year later, I come to you, and tell you that my plan worked perfectly, sales are way up! And you reply that you're not only still losing money, you're losing even more money, and wasn't the point of this to make a profit? And then I say, again, but don't you see how much sales have gone up?That's what Kristol is doing with the Surge. No one doubted that the additions of tens of thousands American troops would cut down on violence, particularly when paired with the results of ongoing ethnic displacement and cleansing, and the inevitable Sunni rejection of jihadist interlopers. But the promise of the Surge was not a reduction in violence, it was an acceleration in reconciliation. Bush was very clear about this. “When [security improves], daily life will improve, Iraqis will gain confidence in their leaders, and the government will have the breathing space it needs to make progress in other critical areas. Most of Iraq's Sunni and Shia want to live together in peace -- and reducing the violence in Baghdad will help make reconciliation possible.” As Thomas Ricks, author of Fiasco, put it, "the purpose of the surge was to operate tactically in such a way as to create a breathing space for Iraqi political movement -- that was the strategic goal. That has not happened." Kristol is changing the definition of success, and in doing, rewriting history and misinforming the New York Times' readers.
